Awesome Chance Meeting with The Lost Girls at the Ace Hotel in NYC

Image Copyright: LostGirlsWorld.com

As it happens in life (and quite often in NYC), you get to meet great/interesting/intriguing people as you go about life. Just back from two great sunny weeks in Pasadena, CA and Los Angeles (more about that some time in the future), i was looking forward to going to a nice cafe and getting some thinking and writing done (one of my fav things to do on sat is to spend time in a nice cafe/cafe-like-place). And the lobby of the Ace Hotel had been on my mind for sometime.

And so it was, i landed up in the lobby around noon. And true to what i had heard and just glimpsed earlier in an in-and-out 5-min trip, this gotta be one of the best places to spend a weekend morning/afternoon sipping coffee , reading, writing, thinking and yes, even watching... The place is part lobby, part cafe, part library, part living room and all with a bar at the back. And if the setting wasnt good enough, i happened to meet 2 (Holly and Amanda)of the 3 original 'Lost Girls' (H, A and Jen). I was introduced to them by a writer of tremendous potential, who was busily revising her (potential best seller) to be submitted to the publishers on Monday!!

If you havent yet come across/heard about/read the 'Lost Girls', then just sample some of their fares. The three 20-something girls (as they call themselves) quit their media jobs and went traveling around the world for a year. And what can one say other than.. the 'rest is history'. The year-long trip became a famous award winning blog - LostGirlsWorld.com and a book that is being released in May by Harper Collins. But wait... there is more.. Warner Bros has bought the rights to make a film (or sthng like that).

Needless to say the girls write masterfully, peppering their blogs with wit('Om My God' takes the cake), keen observations, humor and good story-telling. They have traveled four continents and are now back in NYC and working on the launch of their book.

It will create a buzz (perhaps the 'Lost Girls' will fill the vacuum that the 4 women imagined by Candace Bushnell have left behind for countless women [even men] after the end of their series). And as we kept talking, more friends of the Lost Girls came and then very soon it was time for me to head for my Iyengar Yoga Klass (which rocks beyond, words by the way). The chance meeting captured what travels ultimately are about - being able to share stories, even when we meet as strangers.

Who knows where the 'Lost Girls' will find themselves next. Perhaps they are planning to visit some of the places we got to talk about today, like the breathtaking mountains of Leh/Ladakh, the relatively unexplored Zanskar Valley, the 30-day trek to Mount Kailash and Lake Mansarover (the heavenly abode of Lord Shiva), the drive from Tijuana down into the cactus desert of Baja California via a gorgeous stretch of the highway kissing the pacific ocean(route 1/pacific coast highway pales in comparison), visiting the ruins of Nalanda University (the Worlds first university and which is 2 hrs from my hometown), cheering the Afghan horse riders in the game of Buzhkashi or organizing their book tour as they ride the California Zephyr across the rocky mountains on the Amtrak (you can get a whole 15/30 days pass to travel on the Amtrak for dirt cheap).

Go girls!! The World is to be discovered all over again and then some more....

From one globalwander to you and the many other lost and then perhaps, found souls.

Bon Voyage!

GlobalWanderer

P.S. - i havent said much but the writer mentioned here briefly but she has a mind blowing story being written in her upcoming book. I hope i can write about it when the time is right (and when its fine to tell what she is writing about).